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“Yeah, sure. How are you, Payne?”
“Mr. Atchison.”
“We really hate to disturb you at home, Mr. Atchison,” Washington said. “But we have a few questions.”
“I was hoping you were here to tell me you got the bastards who did…”
“We’re getting closer, Mr. Atchison. It’s getting to be a process of elimination. We think you can probably help us, if you can spare us a minute or two.”
“Christ, I don’t know. My lawyer told me I wasn’t to answer any more questions if he wasn’t there.”
“Sidney Margolis is protecting your interests, as he should. But we’re trying to keep this as informal as possible. To keep you from having to go to Mr. Margolis’s office, or ours.”
“Yeah, I know. But…”
“Let me suggest this, Mr. Atchison, to save us both time and inconvenience. I give you my word that if you find any of my questions are in any way inconvenient, if you have any doubt whatever that you shouldn’t answer them without Mr. Margolis’s advice, you simply say ‘Pass,’ and I will drop that question and any similar to it.”
“Well, Sergeant, you put me on a spot. You know I want to cooperate, but Margolis said…”
“The decision, of course, is yours. And I will understand no matter what you decide.”
Atchison hesitated a moment and then swung the door open.
“What the hell,” he said. “I want to be as helpful as I can. I want whoever did what they did to my wife and Tony Marcuzzi caught and fried.”
“Thank you very much,” Washington said. “There’s just a few things that we’d like to ask your opinion about.”
“Whatever I can do to help,” Atchison said. “Can I have the girl get you some coffee? Or something stronger?”
“I don’t know about Matt here, but the detective in me tells me it’s very likely that a restaurateur would have some drinkable coffee in his house.”
“I have some special from Brazil,” Atchison said. “Bean coffee. Dark roast. I grind it just before I brew it.”
“I accept your kind invitation,” Washington said.
“And so do I,” Matt said.
“Let me show it to you,” Atchison said.
They followed him into the kitchen and watched his coffee-brewing ritual.
Washington, Matt thought, looked genuinely interested.
Finally they returned to the living room.
“Sit down,” Atchison said. “Let me know how I can help.”
Washington sipped his coffee.
“Very nice!”
“I’m glad you like it,” Atchison said.
“Mr. Atchison,” Washington began. “As a general rule of thumb, in cases like this, we’ve found that usually robbers will observe a place of business carefully before they act. And we’re working on the premise that whoever did this were professional criminals.”
“They certainly seemed to know what they were doing,” Atchison agreed.
“So it would therefore follow that they did, in fact, more than likely, decide to rob your place of business some time, days, weeks, before they actually committed the crime. That they (a) decided that your establishment was worth their time and the risk involved to rob; and (b) planned their robbery carefully.”
